Nienor

Name and Nature

Nienor — “Mourning”, the name of her mother’s grief — the younger daughter of Húrin and Morwen, the sister of Túrin; in the woods of Brethil she was Níniel, “the Tearful”, from the tears of her enchanted sorrow. She was the least, the last, the gentlest of the children of Húrin — and the curse’s final victim.

The Enchantment and the Wedlocks

• The curse on the sister: When Túrin was far away, Morwen and Nienor (his sister, kept at home all these years) set out into the wilds to seek him; and the dragon Glaurung — by the curse of Morgoth — cast a spell of oblivion over Nienor, so that she lost all memory of her family and her name.
• The dark meeting: Wandering, witless, “Níniel” came to the woods of Brethil, where Túrin — under the name Turambar — had become the champion of the woodsfolk; he took pity on her, tended her, loved her, and married her, not knowing she was his sister. The Quenta’s horror is here at its height: the doom of Morgoth fulfilled not by sword but by the blind love of kin.
• The revelation: When Glaurung was at last slain by Túrin’s blade, the dying dragon’s words — “by the hand of you that are her brother” — broke the spell: Nienor remembered, and in the full horror of what she had done cast herself from the cliffs of the Cabed-en-Aras into the Teiglin, where Túrin, finding her gone, and the truth known, fell upon Gurthang. She is buried beside him — their mound: — the Narn gives them a single grave under the cairn by the river.

Significance

Nienor is the last victim of the Curse of Morgoth — the gentle one whom the dragon unmade, whose loss is the final twist that breaks the hope of the house. Her fate is the summit of the mythology’s tragedy: the doom that destroys by love itself. Tolkien entwined her with Túrin the deepest of all — “the darkest of all the tales that the Elves tell”.

Related

• Húrin
• Morwen
• Túrin
• Lalaith
• Glaurung
• The Curse of Morgoth
• Brethil
• Narn i Chîn Húrin